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| ... Xavier Brooks pauses, a quiet moment in the forest ... |
I can change backgrounds if I would like to be seen in front of some other background than the actual one people will see if they come into my home.
I like to use the lake, but then people think I am there, and I don’t want anyone to think I am having that kind of happiness.
I can refine the name that is at the bottom of my picture.
I can also find the mute button so that if there is something dropping or scrapping on my end, no one hears.
I haven’t figured out how to freeze a frame so that no one knows if I am gone or not.
Eric was giving the lesson this week.
He decided to choose just one scripture, Mosiah 18:30.
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| ... Richard and Betty Johnson, in a moment to listen to a child in the forest ... |
I go take a good look at the verse by looking in my own telephone. I don’t do this often – read the scriptures on my phone so I am not that good at it, but when I get to the verse I see Eric has read it perfectly – it is just an unusual verse and I start counting.
Either 6 or 8 mentions about the environment.
That is the first time I have stopped to count that in a verse.
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| ... the I am not here move, in the forest ... |
I am focusing on the environment, on how many times it is mentioned, on the fact that I am sure that while I am sitting in zoomChurch with the Jarvis family, there are others in my family who are out on the land, walking their children by water that families have walked by for over 30,000 years if we can believe our archeologists.
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| ... Oldhams, Bates and Johnsons,... ... meeting second cousins in the forest ... |
For the family activity around the verse, Eric has asked everyone to say something about their baptism, or about someone else’s baptism, or say anything they want to say that is connected to this subject or about any sacred rite.
Eric chooses the way we are to participate, from youngest to oldest, so Hebe begins, but her shyness overcomes her and she has nothing to say. Catherine speaks for her.
Catherine says that Hebe is afraid to be baptized. That she is sure the water is going to be too cold. Catherine acknowledges Hebe’s fear and says that Hebe shouldn’t go into the water until she no longer has that fear. By now Hebe wants to say something, and she gets right to the point. Catherine forgot it was Hebe’s friend’s baptism until it was too late, so they ran out of the house and over to the chapel, just arriving in time, but they didn’t have time to put on Hebe’s Sunday dress and Hebe is still holding that grudge against Catherine. Catherine says yes, that is true, and she hopes that Hebe can forgive her and move forward from that moment, not focus on it too much. But it is on Hebe’s mind right now.
Next to talk about baptism are the twins. Rebecca gets to go first, since she is one minute younger than Thomas. She says that rules about witnessing priesthood ordinances have changed. Now women can do it and that she got to be the witness to a baptism. She said she liked the idea of being responsible as a witness.
Now here is something about zoomChurch that is a little different than regular church. There is a level of voluntary participation that is acceptable. Like the call out of Hallelujah in some of the saved churches, but here, in zoomChurch we can add on to what some speaker has said, either with a remark of our own or a question, unlike regular church.
I like that flexibility.
Grandfather George Jarvis added to Rebecca’s idea that he thinks it is a powerful idea, that women are witnesses and can say whether priesthood ordinances have been done correctly. Inside of my head I thought about the circularity of that – called by the priesthood but then in a place to witness if the priesthood has acted correctly.
Thomas was up next. He had two things to say. The first is that he had baptized one of his friends from school, Ryan. The second incident he wanted to share was “The Naked Assignment”. Tom explained that a few years ago, there had been a baptism on Saturday and no one had pulled the plug on the font, so the font was still full of water on Sunday. Tom says his mother has a phobia about that font because there is no locked door between it and the public bathroom. She is afraid some child will go in there and drown, so when she saw the font was still full, she went straight to Thomas’s class, pulled him out of his Sunday School Class and told him he had to go empty the font. He wondered how that was going to happen. She said, just take off all of your clothes, walk into the font, pull the plug and then get dressed again. Thus the term, The Naked Assignment.
Norman Kong’s turn to speak was next. Norman is a friend of the family, not a member of the church, living at the house, and the next oldest in line. Oh, he is not a friend of everyone at the house. Hebe is ready to have him leave and has expressed as much to him. Catherine told Hebe, “Look, you are adopted into the family and we don’t ask you to leave. Norman is here as well on the same conditions.” Hebe thought for a while and then countered, “But Norman doesn’t have official papers from the government.”
No, he doesn’t, but he is still there. On the subject of baptism, Norman had nothing to say, so he passed.
Catherine can’t remember her baptism, only that she was so excited when it was coming up and had begged that it be on her birthday. By then the stake was just having official days when baptisms was done, so she can remember counting the days until her baptism as to happen. She said the baptismal event she remembers best, and so does everyone who was there, is the time when the twins were 3 ½ years old and had just learned the song, I Am a Child of God. They belted out the song louder than anyone else in the congregation. When they came to the line that says children have “parents kind and dear”, the twins belted out “parents kind of dear”. Memorable. Maybe even prophetic.
Eric was next and wanted to talk about an unusual baptism he had seen. A woman in his ward was taking names of her ancestors to the temple and was in the font, being baptized for them. Twenty years previous and before she had joined the church, her son had died in a tragic accident. His name was came up next. She had just finished being baptized for the women on the list, and now his name came up. A young boy entered the font to do the work, but she was still in the water. The sealer told her not to get out, but just to move over while the work was done. Eric said that this was physically a powerful moment for his friend, being in the water, while the proxy baptism was done for her son. Eric said it was a powerful moment for him, watching this as well.
I also had two baptismal stories to tell. One is that because we summered near a lake and in the vicinity of a ward that had no baptismal font, baptisms were often done in the lake. The most unusual one was when the missionaries brought a convert for a baptism and darkness had fallen. I wondered how that was going to happen, so I walked down to the lake to see that they had put their car on the ramp so that the headlights shone on the water. That was a beautiful evening sight, the stars above, the darkness over the water, the light making the mountain on the other side of the water just visible, and the lights of the car shimmering on the spot where the baptism was taking place.
I wanted to tell about a story of a baptism gone wrong since it still weighs heavy on my experiences. Kelvin was turning 8. I had invited all of our relatives over for a meal when the baptism was completed, I had probably prepared enough food for 40 people or so. The house was clean and ready for that event. All of his siblings were dressed in their Sunday clothes as though they were ready to go to the church. Their dad had gone for the morning, over to the university to work on a project that needed some quiet, and then he began to write a poem, time got away from him, and by the time he got home from the university with the car, we were late, since we were to have been there one hour early. Still, we were 17 minutes away from a drive to the stake centre, and we had 20 minutes left before the actual starting time, so I called and said that we were coming, but that we would just be on time. The man in charge said don’t bother coming, I am pulling the plug on the font since you weren’t here an hour early.
I couldn’t get him to change his mind.
I was devastated. I told my immediate family that the baptism was off; it would have to be done on a different day. I called all of my relatives and cancelled the after-party at my house and told them not to go to the event, since it too was cancelled. I probably started to cry as well. If not then, then later, and through the night. By the time I went to church the next morning, Bishop Sherwood knew what had happened and came to apologize, That didn’t bring me any solace. He hadn’t been involved, though he probably had given Kelvin the recommend to take along to the event.
At zoomChurch, Grandfather Jarvis said, “Someone made a mistake.”
I said, no, what was going on here was more than a mistake. I can't let if off that easily. What the priesthood representative had made visible was disrespect for a woman’s time. No recognition that I had spent time talking to my little son and teaching him about the importance of this event, building it up in his mind. Then the hours it took me to make a meal for 40 people, getting the groceries, doing the cooking, cleaning the house, getting 5 teenagers to buy into getting into their Sunday clothes on a Saturday, getting some family talks organized. I think the real cut was that this was my adopted child, one for whom I had physically stretched myself, him a baby while 5 other children were still under six years old. I had been working so hard to integrate him into our family. It was the wrong thing to do to this child.
Grandfather George tried to bring solace yet again, telling me that some day that man will come to my door and ask for forgiveness.
I told George, no, I won’t be letting him over the doorstep in this life or the next. This was not a matter of someone asking forgiveness of me. What I could see was the expression of a deep misogyny that was unacknowledged in my religious community. And no use me forgiving that, since all women would be experiencing it. He had no vision of the underpinning of the organization with all of women's hard work.
Anyway, giving forgiveness doesn’t feel that good to me. I was going for revenge.
My husband was deeply sorry that he had let time get away from him and not come home from the library to get us up there on time. He did have a lovely poem for me to read, he said.
I knew how to cut deep. So I struck. I told him to never talk to me about that poem again.
As months passed, he tried a couple of times. There is no way I am going to read that poem in this world or the next.
I now no longer remember the name of the plug puller – he was in a different congregation and I didn’t know him at all, only by name. And looking back, no great sums of money were lost, no tragic accident happened taking a life, or having someone loose limbs or their faculties. And Kelvin, the 8 year old would have no knowledge of this story, and was baptized on the next available date.
Part of my imagined revenge was going to be that I would never let him be baptized. But that was only a fleeting thought, probably only ½ second on my mind, since that would only have hurt him. Set him apart from all of his friends. Still that was the kind of revenge on the patriarchy that I was looking for.
And that ended my two baptismal stories.
Grandmother Kathy Jarvis told her baptismal stories next. She said she saw a baptism in the Mediterranean, the waves washing into the shore, the woman unable to stay standing in them long enough to have the baptism take place. So the missionaries stood on either side of her, had her put her each of her arms around their necks and walked her into the water, supporting her.
The other story Kathy wanted to tell was the baptism of a child in their family with Down’s Syndrome. Her father was baptizing her. The water was cold. Every time he tried to have her completely submerged something would pop up, a toe or a hand. The cold was too much for her. On his final time, he held her down long enough to see that she was submerged and she came up sputtering, but it was over. She was baptized. When she was dressed again and her friends and neighbours had gathered together to bear their testimonies, she wanted to bear hers. “Me and my mum are fine. Me and my dad are having some problems.” Her words have often been repeated over the years.
Grandfather George was the last to speak. He had two stories as well. When they were in Romania, the missionaries wanted to have a baptism at the church, but there was a public strike of water workers. No water was to be had anywhere. The missionaries thought about how they could get the font filled. Their aha moment was thinking, in a strike, who still has water. Yes, the fire department. So they went to the firemen and for $10 they said they would fill the font. That is how that baptism took place.
George grew up in Brooklyn, NY. His baptism occurred there and he went back to that neighbourhood to look around, sadden that now the garbage cans must be chained to the fences of the houses where they belong, etc. He had remembered the neighbourhood with warmth.
George said a memorable baptism for him was when he was going to do proxy baptisms in the temple – temple work for Lynn Harrison’s father, he said. George was worried for it is not easy to submerge an adult in the water and then lift them back out and he was thinking about how difficult this might be, given he is a mature, substantial adult – at least at that time. George said he relaxed from that fear when he saw the size of the person going to be doing this, much larger than he was. George said he relaxed and enjoyed the experience, opening up his eyes when he was underwater, seeing all of those tiny bubbles along the surface of the water that had come when someone is had laid back in the water and then brought out again.
Well, that is about it:
zoomChurch
Zoom Church
ZooM cHurcH
zOOm cHURCh
ZOOM CHURCH
I almost have a poem going there.
Arta
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